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Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House
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1948 - US
Director
HC Potter
Starring
Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Melvyn Douglas
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Like Bachelor & Bobby-Soxer, minus Temple, plus humor: a better picture by a wide margin. Grant & Loy are a married from the start here and have much more chemistry as a couple trying to, well, build their dream house in the quiet Connecticut countryside, encountering pratfalls at every turn. Simple premise, effectively realized.
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1939 - US
Director
Howard Hawks
Starring
Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Rita Hayworth
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Takes a while to get going, but after the first 30 minutes it’s really a fabulous picture, filled with the least trite, most likable sort of masculine bravado, loyalty and camaraderie; the women who fit into hard-nosed flyer Cary Grant’s life have typically female things to worry about, but they’re a good deal more fleshed out than in the average film of this kind. It’s a slow burner but a lot’s going on, and by the final climax I found I had a lot invested in these characters’ lives.
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The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
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1947 - US
Director
Irving Reis
Starring
Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Shirley Temple
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Bizarre and mostly unfunny plot has Cary Grant sentenced to date Shirley Temple until she gets over him. The real romance between Grant and Myrna Loy is given no time to develop and is rather perfunctorily handed to the audience; Loy, too, always a pleasure to watch anyway, is given nothing to do but look skeptical throughout much of the picture. Has an intermittent easy charm.
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1933 - US
Director
John Cromwell
Starring
Irene Dunne
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One contemporary reviewer summed this up as “the sort of thing Irene Dunne does for RKO,” and that’s pretty much the whole story. An average entry from her early melodrama phase, serviceable enough, and she’s more than marvelous. It’s about a free-thinking suffragist, social worker and prison reformer out of Sinclair Lewis’ novel, and it’s evident the censors took an axe to it, or at the level of conception the filmmakers through Lewis out the window. Vickers’ behavior here is almost socially correct (she does have a child out of wedlock and have an affair with a married man in a sort of “Victorian divorce” arrangement, but it pales in comparison with the literary Ann) and by the end of the film has forgotten her social agenda and cares only for reuniting family, reassuming wifely duties.
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1932 - US
Director
Rouben Mamoulian
Starring
Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Myrna Loy
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Was Rouben Mamoulian a genius? Based on this and the very different (& beloved to me) Queen Christina, I’d say he might just be. This is an endlessly entertaining, intelligent, rewarding musical romance, bursting at the seams with gags and little winks, all right on the mark. Amazing, and adorable.
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1951 - US
Director
Alfred Hitchcock
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Meandering and jam-packed Hitchcock outing, filled with plenty of neat twists and diverting subtext (although the much talked about gay angle is so clear I’d almost have to place it at surface level). It’s also pretty uneven, & I’m not really sure why many rank this among Hitchcock’s top-tier achievements or call it “most underrated.”
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2004 - France
Director
Francois Ozon
Starring
Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi
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This film has little to say past the level of its conceit, which itself is contrived but interesting. The film is the story of a relationship, told in five segments, presented in reverse chronological order. It begins with divorce and ends with the first flush of love. This is contrived, but I like it insofar as it comments on the viewer’s expectations about the trajectory of a romance: that if you really want to have a happy ending in love, you will have to end at the beginning. Aside from that, there isn’t much going on in the film and Ozon does not fully flesh out his story; his characters are stock and largely uncompelling, despite very good performances, and perhaps a great one from Bruni-Tedeschi (this is my first exposure to her, and based on it and what I’ve read about her directorial work I think she could become a great favorite). And all the betrayals are sexual, which is boring as hell…
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[Ch'ing shaonien na cha]
1992 - Taiwan
Director
Tsai Ming-liang
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For me, this was definitely his least interesting so far, but great for all the same reasons I admire his later movies (somber mood, minimalist presentation, and natural in all ways). But thematically and on a narrative level this doesn’t go very far for me: the disaffected youth/revenge fable has been done to death and this offers nothing new, save a bit of insight into the particular Taipei malaise.
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2007 - US
Director
Lajos Koltai
Starring
Claire Danes, Patrick Wilson, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Eileen Atkins, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave, Natasha Richardson, Hugh Dancy
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How could so much talent transplanted from The Hours make such a bland, awful film? How could Michael Cunningham have a hand in such terrible (NaNoWriMoesque) dialogue, and how could these actors do nothing to enliven it? I avoided this in theaters because I knew it would be like this, but it’s still a shame, a waste.
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1981 - Hungary
Director
Istvan Szabo
Starring
Klaus Maria Brandauer
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Really excellent, another entry into that hybrid war/theater not-genre I tend to love in every incarnation. I can only say Klaus Maria Brandauer gives, like, one of the ten best performances ever, and Szabo creates an intense, morally complex, increasingly sinister atmosphere out of a topic which necessarily inspires a number of films, a number of which are unnecessarily dull.
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About TLC
Films: All reviewed | Favorites
Actors: Profiles | Favorites
Directors: Profiles | Favorites
All films by year
2008 Viewing log
The Woman Accused 1933, Paul Sloane
So Big! 1932, William A Wellman
The Awful Truth 1937, Leo McCarey
Conquest 1937, Clarence Brown
It’s Love I’m After 1937, Archie Mayo
The Mad Miss Manton 1938, Leigh Jason
Algiers 1938, John Cromwell
The Gay Divorcee 1934, Mark Sandrich
All This, & Heaven Too 1940, Anatole Litvak
Mannequin 1937, Frank Borzage
A short digression on Charles Boyer…
Yes, I am endeared. I am, in fact, ensorceled. His inhumanly arched eyebrows, his little winks and half-smiles, and that ability to at once maintain full control of his material while shining the spotlight on his costar: yes, that is talent; yes, this is love. And no, Cluny Brown, it’s not just the cocktails giving you that persian cat feeling… I think we both know too well it has a bit to do with Mr Charles Boyer. Rawr.
Pre-Code Hollywood
» The Woman Accused 1933 Paul Sloane
» So Big! 1932 William A Wellman
» Pre-Code Icons Gallery #1: Barbara Stanwyck
» A Month of Pre-Code Hollywood
Previous months
30s Cinema
Maestresses
The Lubitsch Race
In-transit romances
Nothing better suited to Hollywood romance than three weeks out of time, away from life, falling in love with a stranger, spending days idly and nights actively.
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